8 New and Underappreciated Marketing Resources from Google

We have a bit of a complicated relationship with Google In the SEO/inbound community. We are often the first, and loudest, to call them out when they get their priorities messed up or hoard data for questionable reasons.

But on the whole, we use more of Google’s wares than probably any other industry.

At Distilled, we use Google Apps for email, calendars, document collaboration, reporting, Google+ for internal sharing discussions, Hangouts for live video, chat, and webinars. Most of our clients use Google Analytics (as we do for our own websites). Our PPC specialists have core expertise in AdWords. Our keyword research work invariably turns to the AdWords Keywords Tool for search volume estimates.

While working with our Creative team to plan a data visualization project recently, I learned about a relatively new service from Google (Consumer Surveys — see below), and it got me thinking about other Google projects that have proven to be useful for our work and those that promise to be in the future.

This guide is intended for those SEOs/inbound marketers who are familiar the fundamental Google resources (Google Analytics, Apps, the AdWords Keywords Tool) but may not be aware of what else is out there and what is coming soon.

Analytics & Tagging

1. Universal Analytics

This is not particular to inbound at all, but it affects all disciplines of web marketing. Most online marketers have some familiarity with Google Analytics. It’s the most widely-adopted analytics platform on the web, and it’s about to evolve.

Universal Analytics (in beta) is apt to change the way we use and think about marketing analytics. This successor of the Google Analytics we know will bring improved performance and, most importantly, new functionality and flexibility to your reporting.

Uses & benefits of Universal Analytics:

Cross device tracking of individual users: We live in a multi-device world. To date, Google Analytics has not had core functionality that allowed for tracking users across all of their devices (one user is tracked as multiple “unique visits,” one for each device). Universal Analytics creates a User ID for the individual and allows you to track their interactions with your site/app across their devices allowing for cross-device optimization.

The ability to push “offline” data into the system: Using the same User ID functionality, you can tie this data to a single user — across devices and interactions — over the lifetime of their relationship with your business. While passing any “Personally Identifiable Information” into GA is strictly a violation of the Terms of Service, this doesn’t mean you can’t securely keep that information together on your end and (respectfully) use it to manage your customer relationships and otherwise learn who your best customers are.

20 custom dimensions, 20 custom metrics: You can do a lot with GA’s customer variables, but this is really going to open things up. If you want to push offline and other data into your reports, these are going to come in handy.

Set your own session and campaign expirations: Sessions can be set up to 4 hours, campaigns up to 2 years.

Justin Cutroni, one of the most well-informed analytics gurus you’ll find publishing online, wrote a nice post about the potential of UA, using his local gardening supply store as a case study of sorts. It is highly recommended reading.

There is so much here that even if you don’t start implementing for live campaigns yet, getting your head around the possibilities of UA (if not the measurement protocol itself) is only going to benefit you as this next iteration bridges the chasm to wide adoption.

Note: before you dive in and start using Universal Analytics on your website, keep in mind there are some things still missing: AdSense, DoubleClick, Content Experiments, and Remarketing are not yet integrated. You’ll probably want to run UA tracking concurrently with your existing GA tracking. The next resource in the list will help with that.

Posted by MikeTek
We have a bit of a complicated relationship with Google In the SEO/inbound community. We are often the first, and loudest, to call them out when they get their priorities messed up or hoard data...